No Kingdom for a Blacksmith
by Czarinna
Summary: Winter came for all the cripples and bastards and broken things. The remaining Starks, once scattered by the winds, came back to Winterfell to rebuild their fallen home. All the remaining wolves returned, all but one. Winter came for everyone, but one blacksmith went in search of winter instead – to find himself and to find the last missing Stark.
1. Chapter 1

Bran

* * *

The dream was green that night. The sea turned to blood and a castle upon the shore crumbled in the storm. The wolves of the Wolfswood cried out and gorged on horseflesh, black soot on their claws as they scratched and bit through the skins and leathers of the man with the sword. He fell to his knees, staring at the yellow eyes of the wolves, small and ragged and starving.

And Bran opened his eyes.

The bells at the gates were ringing.

A man had arrived on foot, in a thin brown cloak that was no barrier against the blistering cold of a winter night. Bran shivered as the wind bit hard against his cheeks. He wheeled his chair faster into the yard, men of the household guard behind him, to get a closer look at the man who stood in the frozen mud. His face was dirty and along his brow was a smattering of crusted blood. He had no horse and no food, just a plain blade at his hip. Beneath his matted hair, in dark and hungry sockets, his storm blue eyes burned.

"Please, I'm a smith. I can work," he rasped.

"Lord Stark, we have few rooms as it is and even less food," Wybert Eldwyne said, turning to Bran as he tugged his cloak closer about his shoulders. Tall and wiry, with a heavy black brow and kind face, he was the son of a tradesman from White Harbor. He had no titles of his own, but those didn't matter so much in the North, and meant even less in the winter.

Bran looked to him, and then to the ragged man.

Did he think that he would be sent away? He didn't want to, he never wanted to. The urchins and the ragged mothers with their children always begged with red rimmed eyes watery with hunger. Ned Stark would not have let his own people be left to waste away. A man could not be the warden of graves and bones, but Winterfell was no great castle any longer, just the skeleton of an old dynasty and there was never room for all of them. Some of them, yes, but the rest had to be sent away with some bread and cheese to sleep in a stable in Wintertown.

The man asked for nothing else, but there was something in his stare that made Bran unwilling to turn him away, a familiarity that couldn't be shaken. It left a cold in his bones.

"We can find him a room somewhere…if it has to be the stables, then that must be it," said Bran after a moment, wary but resolute.

The guard nodded and hoisted the strange man's arm about his shoulders with ease.

"Come on boy, we can find you a warm bed of hay, at least."

"Not the stables," a clear voice called. Bran turned his head and saw Sansa step through the archway. Her hair was in a single plait, a gleaming rope of copper against her thick ermine cloak. She was followed by the Maid of Tarth and Alysane Mormont, both hastily clad in boiled leather. Wybert Eldwyne bowed his head in deference.

"Sansa? It's the middle of the night."

"I heard the bells," she said, coming close so that the man's battered face was flooded in light from the torch in Sansa's hand, the wounds worse in sharp relief. Her mouth was a grim line.

"My lady, perhaps it would be best if you went inside, the chill is bitter."

"Brienne, do not worry yourself," said Sansa. Alysane inspected the traveler, her hand on the hilt of her sword.

"My lady," came a dry whisper from the man, perhaps it was reverence, perhaps recognition, but either way Bran felt the cold run down his spine at the hesitation from Sansa. She searched his face for a moment, but seemed to give up.

"Definitely not the stables. We have a few beds available in the servant's quarters."

"I'll have a servant find a room, my lady," said Alysane before walking back to the keep, "You can manage with him, Wybert?"

"Of course, my lady," he said, shifting the smith's arm around his shoulders.

"Do you have a name for us to call you by?" Sansa asked kindly, her brow furrowed with concern. The man, gripping the guard's cloak, gave a weak cough and lifted his head to look at her.

"Gendry, m'lady."

"We ought to get out of the cold, Gendry," she said, staring at him for a couple moments longer

Sansa led the way, and Wybert Eldwyne followed with Gendry leaning heavily on his shoulders.

"I will fetch the maester. Would you stay with him, Bran?"

Bran looked up quickly to see his sister halfway down the hall, and he rolled his chair over the flagstone floor as quickly as he could. Beside Sansa, the she-bear stood half a head shorter, tough and stocky.

There's a room at the end of the hall, my lady. I'll check the gates again, but you'll manage with Wybert. My youngest is running a fever, the poor boy."

Sansa smiled and put a sympathetic hand on Alysane's shoulder, "Maester Samwell will see him before the night is done," she said as she gathered her muddy wool skirt and walked off to rouse Maester Samwell from his sleep.

"Lady Alysane, I think Calon had the gates locked already, but I'll check them when I'm no longer needed," said Wybert.

"Thank you. Jacks and Quent have the watch tonight; you make sure they have the good gloves. Shadd lost three fingers last week."

She left them at the door of the empty servant's room. The quarters were small and sparse, with a single cot pushed against the wall, at its foot a pine bench, and a rickety chair by the door, but warmer by far than the stables. No more than ten paces in either direction, the room was kept warm easily by the faint halo of heat from the walls and the brazier in the corner of the room.

Bran reached out for a moment and touched the wall, glad that the stone still pulsed with warmth and gladder still that the walls of Winterfell still stood. Bran remembered with regret the quarters where the Stark family once slept. There had been a time when the halls were filled with the echoes of laughter, but upon Bran's return they were nothing but a ruin with snow falling through the eaves and dusting the burnt remains of beds and tables, beautiful bookcases and desks as if they were nothing more than the charred bones of another life, another Winterfell. Now they were just empty rooms.

The rebuilt stone where the walls had caved in were warm, but the ghosts lived there.

"Come on, boy, we need to get you out of those wet clothes before chill gets into your bones."

"M'not a boy," he mumbled in return, and winced as his cloak was unbuckled and fell heavily to the side.

Wybert Edlwyne released his grip on Gendry and let him sit on the bench at the foot of the bed. Glassy-eyed and tired, Gendry just sat for a moment, breathing slowly.

"I don't know what any of us would do without you," said Bran to the guard.

"I imagine you would find another man to replace me, my lord, though I should hate to leave," said Wybert as he shook Gendry, who had closed his eyes and begun to lean dangerously.

"You need never leave. I expect I will need your council more when Sansa manages to negotiate independence for the North."

"You do not want to be king?"

"I wanted to be a knight."

The door opened then with Maester Samwell trailing at Sansa's heels.

"My lady," Wybert said, bowing his head.

"Thank you for helping. You have done so much and you must be tired," she said gently, "Maester Samwell will look after him now."

"Thank you, my lady," said the aging guard, and with a bow he left the room. Knowing him, Bran didn't think he would be going to bed at all, rather rounding up the last of the staff and checking the gates one last time.

The smith glared and grunted unhappily, flinching often as a servant removed his soiled and tattered outer clothing. He could barely stand on his own, but he furrowed his brow anyways and glared at the servant removing his boots when Sam walked in and took the task upon himself, asking the young man to fetch hot broth and warmed wine.

"I've no need of a featherbed, m'lord," he mumbled, leaning heavily on the fat maester as he was settled on the bed, sitting against a few pillows. He looked larger then than he had leaning on the steward, or limping towards the gate.

Sansa stood behind Bran, her hand resting on Bran's shoulder. Sam fed the man and made sure he took only measured bites and sips. He was more compliant as his lips began to lose their bluish tinge, but he fussed as Sam tried to sink his weary feet into a pail of warm water.

"Do you want to keep your toes, or not?" the maester said.

The smith glared as Sam shoved the soup spoon in his mouth, equal irritation in his dark blue eyes. Silent as ever, the man relented and let himself be taken care of, but a few moments later he was overtaken by a fit of wet, rasping coughs and fell back onto the pillows from the effort. His eyes fluttered closed and he turned his head away from the next spoon that was offered him. Sighing, Sam put aside the half empty bowl of broth and called a servant.

"I'll have to clean and wrap those cuts now that you're finished eating," he said to Gendry, who only nodded in return.

"Sansa, you should leave now," Bran said solemnly from his chair beside the bed.

"His injuries do not offend me. An injured and sick guest in my home should be looked after," she said, watching Gendry.

Her grip was a vice on Bran's shoulder and he reached up to place his own atop hers. As if rising from a stupor, she realized that she had been holding his shoulder too hard and took her hand away. She folded her arms neatly upon her fur shawl.

"Lady Stark, I have no doubt that you do him a great courtesy by wishing to stay. I am sure you have seen injuries before, but his cuts are not fresh and have been seared to his clothing. We needs must remove everything. It's not a matter of delicate sensibilities, but one of privacy. I would ask Lord Stark to leave as well, but if you insist that he be treated as a guest, then he may stay," Maester Samwell said.

"I will stay," Bran said, resolute, "He should have some company and support. It would be poor hospitality to leave him."

"Bran, please…"

"Sansa, I would stay with him."

"If that is your wish, brother," she said after a pause.

"It is," Bran lowered his voice, "I want to know he lives."

Sansa stared at Bran before glancing at the guest, examining his large and bony frame propped up by several pillows and the sharp hollows under his cheekbones and ribs. Sansa sighed and gave a curtsy to the maester.

"Maester Samwell, thank you for your help."

"Thank you, my lady."

"Then goodnight. Bran," she said, turning to him anew, "I trust you know what you are doing."

"I do, Sansa."

She gave him a polite smile and left the room, her fur lined skirt swishing behind her softly. Bran watched her leave. He found himself wondering quite often what she was really thinking. They had once shared a love of stories and had talked for hours, eating lemoncakes and humming Florian and Jonquil. He remembered with fondness sharing a fur blanket by the hearth, Sansa young enough to not care about drawing her knees up in the chair with him and listen to the tales Old Nan told of gallant knights and noble deeds done long ago. She wasn't a little girl any more than he was a little boy.

She was his sister, but she was different, and it made him sad.

Sometimes he would pause on his way past her solar and listen to her play the high harp. It was a lovely gift from the Dragon Queen, carved of mahogany wood from the forests of the Reach and gleaming ivory from across the Narrow Sea. In those days she had sung every so often. The rare chords of Jenny of Oldstones lingered in the halls and her high, clear voice held him fast outside her door. She never sang any happy songs.

Bran was shaken from his musings by a sharp hiss from Gendry. At the bed, Maester Samwell had unlaced the top of Gendry's tunic as much as he could before the cloth stuck to a cut along his ribs and another on his shoulder. The Maester sighed and rubbed his head.

"We have to cut your clothing off. Some of the wounds won't give easily, and there may be flesh that has to be removed. After that there may be wounds that need stitching," the Maester said to Gendry, who was still shivering slightly.

"I can take it," was all he said as he squared his jaw, but the Maester gave him a couple of sips of warm strongwine.

Maester Samwell ran the small knife of his own design through the flame of the candle to prevent festering, as he had told Bran the first time he had observed this sort of work. Tearing rough-spun cloth as gently as he could from half healed wounds, the Maester cut away the tunic crusted to Gendry's skin with blood. The smith never voiced any pain except for the occasional grimace when the cloth had glued too strongly to his wounds and the damaged flesh had to be cut away. Some of the wounds were rough and looked to be much closer to claw or tooth marks than the clean slits of dried blood on other parts of his body.

"Wolves?" Bran asked Gendry, who was gritting his teeth against the sharp sting of the knife.

"My horse looked worse," was all he said.

It was the cold that had staved off infection for so long, but in the warmth of Winterfell he had to be scrubbed clean. The servant came back with a bucket of hot water, lightly stinking of sulphur, from the spring in the Godswood, freshly boiled water, strongwine, clean bandages, and a poultice made from a mixture of several herbs and honey. Maester Samwell wiped the wounds with a square of cloth that had been boiled in water and dipped in strongwine, causing Gendry to flinch at the sting of the alcohol and the heat of the cloth, but didn't cry out, even when the maester, with the very minor help of Bran and the servant boy, applied the poultice and the bandages.

As the grime from his body was washed away, older scars surfaced. Running from under the hinge of his jaw to the hollow of his throat was a particularly nasty one, shallow and jagged, as if someone had held a knife to his neck and Gendry had only narrowly escaped. His ribs, when the maester reached them, were revealed to be a mess of green and purple, the skin hard and hot to the touch. Nearly passed out from weariness, only the wasted muscles along Gendry's chest twitched when Sam poked at the mottled flesh. The smith fell into a pained sleep once the washing was finished entirely.

"Those are probably bruised ribs. He couldn't have walked any ways with broken or cracked ones," said Maester Samwell frowning as he pressed the back of his hand to the bruising, and then again to Gendry's forehead.

"Will they heal?" Bran asked.

"Yes, but more worrisome is infection or bleeding within the body. He has a fever. I didn't notice it when he was wrought with the cold, but he has one. It's probably the only reason the cold did not take him."

Could this man survive a fever? At the thought, Bran's gut twisted, just as strong as it had when Gendry had come through the gates not more than a few hours ago. He has to live. He is strong, he has to live.

"How could you tell if he were bleeding inside?"

"There would be blood in the vomit or urine. He has to be watched carefully in the next couple of days. That he survived this long is a miracle."

Bran turned to Gendry once again. He considered for a moment, what to do with him, watching Maester Samwell continue to attend to his wounds, before making a decision.

"I will watch over him for a few hours, as will Summer. You have done as much as you can, Maester Samwell, and are in need of rest."

"My lord, are you certain?"

"I am sure, Maester Samwell. You need your rest far more than I do if we want him to live."

"I will not be farther than the room across the hall. He's sleeping now, so be careful to watch for changes in his breathing. He has a bit of a fever, so check every half hour or so to make sure it hasn't risen. If it does, send for me immediately and place cool cloths on his neck and forehead."

"Thank you, Maester Samwell."

The Maester left the room and Bran was alone with Gendry, save for Summer who was allowed in a few minutes later by the servant sitting by the door. The direwolf jumped up onto the fur blankets covering the man in the bed and nestled his large body by his feet. Gendry slept deeply, his eyelids flickering with dreams as the candle burned down another notch in the wax.

The night wore on, and Bran found his lids growing heavy and soon they closed despite his protests, followed by deeper sleep and dreams. He dreamt of blood under a dim gray sky and the stench of still water in the summer time, he dreamt of whispers in the dark; a wolf howled in sorrow and fear as she ran across the hard snow but wasn't heard. He dreamt of a prayer whispered in the darkness – names he thought he knew but flew away before he could catch them. My sister, he called in his dream but no one answered. He dreamt of the clang of steel and storms upon weathered rock and fury. A small black haired boy cried silently with his fist wrapped in the golden tendrils of his mother's hair as she lay dead with a broken piece of what looked like bone in her chest. Bran dreamt of sorrow and it pulled him under the crashing waves, tossing him against the rocks as he screamed and a hand dragged him under the surface. He looked down and found green eyes staring back at him.

_I died for you, Bran, and you can't even open your eyes. Open your eyes!_

Bran woke up with a start, his heart pounding and on his brow a cold sweat. He felt Summer nudging his hand with his large nose, whining softly.

"What is it, Summer?"

The large wolf turned his head towards the bed and Bran sat up, dread and surprise sinking into his stomach. The smith was shivering, white as his bandages, and trying to get up onto his elbow. His naked chest shone with glossy sweat over the bones of his ribcage, and heaved quietly.

Bran called the servant slumped on the bench awake and asked him to quickly get one of the empty buckets, just in time as well, because Gendry seemed to finally summon the strength for a proper heave and spilled out the broth and strongwine he had taken only an hour ago. But the strongwine Maester Samwell had given him was a brownish color – the liquid Gendry had vomited was as red as Dornish Sour. The servant paled as Bran grimaced, silent.

"There's blood, my lord."

"Give me the pan and fetch Maester Samwell," Bran said, grave and with no room for negotiation, as Gendry coughed weakly and spat up more blood. He placed the pan in his lap and reached over to the sideboard where the wet cloths lay and wiped the man's neck and head as he shuddered, but didn't vomit anymore. This man had to live. Bran didn't know why, but the smith couldn't be allowed to slip away in the night.

"You're alright, Gendry. It's just a fever, it'll pass. You'll be alright, Gendry," Bran murmured in what he hoped were soothing tones. Sansa would be better at this than him.

Sam came as quickly as he could, and took over for Bran. Gendry continued to shiver with his eyes shut together and teeth clenched.

All Sam could do was mop his brow with care and give him a few drops of milk of the poppy and warm honeyed water. Gendry stopped shaking a little later, but his skin was still burning hot and his abdomen spasmed and clenched with coughs and heaves every few minutes. Summer sat by Gendry's bedside and whined. Gendry noticed the wolf through the daze of his fever and reached out a hand to touch Summer's head.

"So that's a direwolf," Gendry rasped between shudders, "Good gods," he said before beckoning the huge animal to the bed weakly.

"You are not afraid? You were attacked by wolves not long ago," said Bran frowning as Summer laid his large head in Gendry's calloused black hand.

"It's only the hungry ones you have to worry about."

He soon dozed off into sleep again, Summer resting gently against his uninjured side.

"How bad is it?" Bran asked the maester in a low voice, not wanting to break Gendry's fitful sleep.

"If he survives tonight, he may have a chance."

"But the blood in his vomit…that means he is bleeding inside?"

"Yes. I'm afraid so. The bruising on the left side of his ribs may have damaged his stomach and other organs. There's no way to fix it. We can only give him water and honey and a paste of whatever greens we have in the castle – if we have beets then he will need them to replenish all the blood he has lost. The rest is up to him. If his fever turns, there is a chance he will live."

It was the middle of the longest winter in living memory. Gendry shouldn't have survived his journey with no horse, no food, and no fur cloak. He had to be strong beyond measure to have lived at all. Under the starved and sick shell, he had been tall and broad. Maybe he would never be the man he was before his journey, but he would live.

Bran knew it was enough to live.

* * *

To Be Continued...

A/N: Please be kind and review.

Are the characters making sense? Or are they too OOC?

Is the setting and plot elements as they are presented in the story clear enough?

What doesn't seem to make sense when you read it?

Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow?


	2. Chapter 2

Arya

(two years before)

* * *

In a tavern of Ragman's Harbor, Cat laughed with Brusco's daughters as the men drank and japed with the women on their laps. The tavern was dark and musty, as buildings in Braavos often were. On the air hung the briny odor of the sea, sweat, and spiced meat. It was a good place to hide, amongst the sailors; amongst the dark Summer Islanders with their jeweled vests and kaftans, men of the free cities with arched daggers and dirks, and pale northern knights in their heavy quilted vests and boiled leather. A man could get lost and never be found.

The evening settled into night and Ragman's harbor was grey and foggy again. She learned that price of lumber had risen drastically and the pepper trade was being used as a cover to smuggle food into the towns and castles that were starving. She learned that bodies were being found in the forest and in small towns. They said it was a monster, eight feet high and leaking thick black blood. They said he couldn't be killed. _Anyone can be killed._

She spotted the broad back of a Westerosi traveler, his large ears poking out from under a head of shaggy black hair. He sat huddled in the corner, not one patron noticing him but her.

He turned his head when a girl gave him another glass of wine, and in the dim light she caught a high cheekbone, and the line of a strong jaw. _He's better looking than those washed up boys that the war's been bringing, _she thought. The war brought skinny starved boys to the free cities, with crooked knees, some missing limbs. The poorest ones had to stay, but some smallfolk could pay passage with service on a ship.

She remembered when a man first kissed her. She slit his ribs for it and he had been abed for a whole turn of the moon of poisoned blood. When she had done the kissing herself, she had been no older than fourteen, and still unflowered. He had been just a boy, no older than seven and ten, tall with brown hair and dark freckled skin. His accent was funny, she had teased him. "Astapor," he had said, "I was a poor man's son. Before the Dragons came." He had called her pretty and brushed her long hair out of her face, but only after he had sorely beaten her in a duel. They had had laughed and kissed and Cat almost forgot that she was a wolf.

_He laughed too easy. _Her girlhood had been wrung out of her over the years; she didn't know how to laugh like he did, so she never saw him again. She was fifteen when she decided she might like kissing, perhaps with someone other than the young bravvo who had kissed her tenderly, whose breath smelled of peaches from the Reach and his skin of salt. Perhaps someone who didn't laugh so much; she didn't trust a man whose smiles came easily. She knew easy smiles made it easy to steal fruit from vendors. _From women too, _she thought.

She mocked herself for thinking the young traveler handsome, and watched the room, like Syrio Forel had taught her, and the kindly old man too. Her ears pricked at the whispers of men in the corner, and she slid silently off of her bench and crept closer in the shadows. She wished she were a cat instead of a girl; she could have hidden in the rafters and no one would be afraid at all of what she would hear. But she was a cat, and she slid into the shadows silently, away from the candlelight. The two men playing cyvasss over whispers and ale never saw nor heard her.

"The spice trade to Dorne will be ruined if the Dragon queen sets sail," complained a white-whiskered man in a green surcoat as he made his move on the board.

"Afraid her dragons will roast all your turmeric and saffron, old man?" replied his companion, in accented common tongue. _Bravvosi, _Cat thought. He was younger, lean and brown and wiry, but he took longer to make a move on the board.

"Dorne will ally with her, of course. Her brother's wife was slain by those that took her throne."

"The throne she believes is hers, you mean. Dragons, pah. That Aegon has taken the Stormlands. perhaps Dorne will side with a son of Elia Martell rather than his aunt."

"He has sat on the Stormlands for a year and has not made any moves into the Crownlands or the Riverlands. He ought to sail for Dorne."

"He ought to take the Crownlands and be done with the Lannisters, or take the Riverlands from the outlaws."

"It's not the outlaws that are the terror anymore." The old whiskered man leaned close to his companion, "There's an army in the Riverlands, come out of the Vale."

"I thought they'd never come off their perch and deign to fight. The Arryn child is a boy of eight, is he not? And Lysa Arryn is dead. Have the Royce's taken up arms instead?"

"The Arryn child is dead, it is a Hardyng that is the heir now. His wife is Lysa Arryn's own neice."

"Her neice?"

Cat held her heart in her throat; it fluttered, going _thump thump thump _faster than it should have.

"Sansa Stark, from what I hear. She's going to take back Winterfell."

_It's a lie. It has to be a lie, _a girl thought, _she is a fake, like the Arya Stark that they married to the Bastard of Bolton years ago. _

"Sansa Stark has been hiding in the Vale all this time?"

_Lies!_ She wanted to shout, _they're all lies! _Couldn't these men tell lies from the truth? Sansa was gone. _My sister is gone_, she would have told them, if a girl remembered that she had a sister. But a girl had no sisters and a girl had no home.

"All this time."

A girl was angry, angry and slipped away in shadows, no longer wishing to be a cat, but a wolf. There was fury in her heart; she imagined what the whiskered man would look like with a red smile, blood bubbling up out of his throat. Her heart thrummed, and her hands shook, tingling oddly. She clenched her fists hard, her nails in her palms to stop the shaking. _A wolf, not a mouse. A wolf, not a mouse. _

She watched a few men exchange coin with tavern wenches and disappear upstairs, but for the most part the men in the corner continued to throw knives at the painted panel on the wall and a few older captains with dark skin and thick black beards played cyvasse and japed about the dragon queen. The man with the large ears from before left his table and Cat glanced at him, seeing his face for the first time that night.

For a moment, she couldn't move. In the dim light of the candles she had thought_…no…not him_._ It couldn't be him_. There was blood in her ears, pounding like the sound of a drum. _Boom boom boom. Sansa sansa sansa. _A girl's head was filled with a crescendo the like of which she hadn't felt in four years. _Boom boom doom._

A girl sprang quietly into the night.

She followed him out the door of the tavern and onto the small street along the canal. He had lifted his hood, but she knew it was him striding along the cobbled path, skirting aside drunken men and painted whores. No one else was that tall and that broad. Quiet as a shadow, Cat padded along behind him in her deerskin slippers until he disappeared into an alleyway and headed towards a block of apartments. She climbed onto the low roof of the house easily, silently moving up over a balcony and onto the still warm tiles. Silently jumping across the narrow gap between houses, she watched him slink through the alleyway. _He must be staying here. He was listening for news like I was. Why is he here? _She jumped down from the roof and he froze as she came up behind him without a noise, a dagger at his throat.

Taller and stronger than her by far, she was surprised he didn't make a move to fight, rather stood tensed like a shocked deer.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed, yanking the hood of his cloak off his face and spinning him around so that his back was flush against the stone. Her dagger was at his neck. He was taller than her by a whole head, but his face was dark in shadow, just a glint of light in his eyes. They looked blue.

"I don't have much coin. Just take it, whatever you like," he said, his voice trembling just a little bit.

"I asked you what you're doing here," Cat hissed, pressing her knife into the skin of the man's throat, pale blue in the moonlight and untouched by scars or weather.

"I…I'm hiding."

"You liked the outlaw life so much you decided to come here?"

"What…what, no! I don't know you…you're the girl from the tavern, aren't you? I thought you were a Braavosi."

She dug the knife deeper, unafraid to cut, but then she heard it. A whimper. It made her stop, and look. Of course it wasn't him, now that she saw him in the dim light from the lights along the canal. Syrio would have chastised her for such a stupid mistake. Those stupid ears.

"You're not him," said Cat after a moment. She felt the hard knot of his throat move under her hand as he swallowed.

"No! No! I'm not him!"

"But you look like him. Why do you look like him?" she spat.

"He's dead!" the man said, his eyes wide and glittering a dark blue in the light. Cat's face stormed over with a whip of anger, "You don't have to worry about him, he's dead, you must have heard! Everyone's heard for years!"

His words rang in her head as she brought the dagger to the man's throat and cut. He seemed to realize at the last moment that she was only a scrawny girl and wrested out of her grip, tossing her onto the ground with all his strength. She took the dagger and leapt, but he turned from her and the blade cut into the flesh of his shoulder. He was strong, far stronger than she.

"King Robert's dead! He's been dead for seven years!" he yelled, striking her again. He clipped the top of her head and she fell backwards, breathing heavily, dizzy. She was fast but he had been too strong.

"What's wrong with you, you crazy girl? He's dead, I'm not him. I don't know you. I'm not my father."

He held his hand over his neck, blood leaking from under his fingers. She felt like she had been dropped in a frozen river.

"What do you want with me?" he asked, his voice trembling again. He should have had the good sense to run, "Are you going to kill me? Did someone pay you to kill me?"

"No," Cat said

"What…what do you want from me?"

"Your name."

He laughed darkly.

"People are looking for me, people who want me dead."

"I want your name," she said, clearly, "I want it. No one else. If I wanted you dead you would have been a corpse long ago."

"Edric Storm."

"King Robert's bastard."

"Yes."

She unsheathed Needle from her scabbard and placed the tip of the blade on his leather jerkin, just over his heart between the ribs.

"Run home," she said. "You won't die today."

He scrambled up and broke into a run, still holding the cloth to his neck. Her head reeled painfully and all the memories of a girl that wasn't Cat caught up to her. A girl had thought she had seen him – she had thought it was him.

_Too bloody lowborn to be kin to m'lady high._

A girl wished she had never remembered him at all.

In her normal dreams there had been her Father at Baelor's Sept, her mother and her brother dying at the Twins, her brother Jon, run through with her own Needle, Nymeria killed in place of Lady. There were nightmares upon nightmares in her head; the things that had happened worse than the dreams her mind made up. She had only once dreamed of the Bull. Long ago she had dreamt that she kissed him and plunged Needle through his chest. _Do you remember where the heart is?_

She sank to her knees in the dirty alleyway. It was a chilling fear, wild and savage, that crawled up her spine as she began to understand. _They would have me forget. One day I will lose every memory I have._ _I have thought that by coming here I would live, but Arya will die anyways. Arya will die and I will have killed her._

The fear ebbed away and the price of her vengeance sat before her now, clear and cold in her heart. _A man may befriend a wolf, but never tame a wolf. _Maybe it would make it easier to lie when the sun came up again. Maybe it would make it easier to die.

* * *

To Be Continued...

A/N: Please be kind and review.

Are the characters making sense? Or are they too OOC?

Is the setting and plot elements as they are presented in the story clear enough?

What doesn't seem to make sense when you read it?

Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow?


	3. Chapter 3

Bran

* * *

"Is your name just Gendry?" asked Bran, removing the stinking bandage from across Gendry's chest carefully. It gave slowly, the ragged edges of the wound sticking to the stained cloth.

"Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill," he said, suppressing a wince. He refused to look at the deep scratches, but the slight smell of pus and blood didn't seem to bother him as much as it did Bran.

"Is that where you travelled from? The Brotherhood without Banners?" asked Bran, wondering if Ser Gendry had known Lady Stoneheart.

"Sort of."

"Then where did you come from?"

"Lots of different places," he whispered, before he gave a weak, wet cough and shuddered.

"Where were you born?" Bran asked after Gendry stopped coughing, not wanting to push him into answering a question he clearly didn't want to answer. Bran would ask him later, when he was well.

"King's Landing, m'lord."

"You've traveled a long way since you left home."

"Took six years nearly."

Gendry then sat up in his cot, desperately trying not to wince as the worst of his half-healed wounds stretched at the scabs, nearly opening anew. "I'd like to start work m'lord." Ser Gendry's brow was furrowed as he tried to stand.

"Seven hells, no, Ser Gendry," said Maester Samwell from the door, "You lie back down, I have a little bit of milk of the poppy here for you."

Sam handed the smith a cup of cloudy water and grudgingly Ser Gendry took it. Closing his eyes and resting his head, he was asleep again within minutes. Bran watched with quiet respect, brooding over what he had learned. He only looked up when Sam knelt down to examine Gendry.

"Is the worst over, Maester Samwell?"

"I think it so."

Bran found himself reaching out his hand to place it atop Gendry's larger and rougher one. He didn't quite know where the need had come from, and pulled away. He left the room with a weight in his heart and made his way across the keep to the dining hall, cursing the route he had to take with his chair. There were so many repairs that still had to be done, more important things than ramps for his chair, but he was glad that there were walls and a roof to house the people remaining in Winterfell. He was glad too that Sansa's glass garden had been built before the heavy snows came again. Through the stone archways overlooking the yard, Bran could see a few men and women laying stones to repair the ravaged armory as he wheeled by. A few more walked by in thick cloaks through the snow with baskets of potatoes and beets. He continued on, passing the occasional servant that would bow to him and call him, 'my lord.'

Someone called, "my lord," behind him and he started.

Bran turned to see Jaime Lannister leaning in an archway, clad in a thick wool cloak the color of Stark grey and boiled leather. Bran glanced around quickly and felt his stomach drop while the one-handed Kingslayer shifted to his other leg and crossed his arms. It was half repaired; the main floor and the ones below could be accessed, but the highest rooms, where he had seen Jaime Lannister lay with his own sister, were now barred with wood.

"I only wish to go to dinner undisturbed; my sister does not like it when I don't come."

"I don't intend to disturb you; I only wanted to know how fares the smith. Brienne has been at Lady Stark's side, else she would have asked herself."

Maester Luwin's sage voice at the back of his mind reminded Bran not to snap or grumble.

"He is doing much better. Does Brienne know him that she worries so much?"

"We both do. Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill. Brienne owes her life to him. She was going to be killed by two gentlemen, Rorge and Biter. Ser Gendry ran a spear through his throat to save her. You can imagine Lady Stoneheart wasn't pleased in the slightest. She just about slit his throat for it."

Bran remembered the scar at Gendry's throat, and shuddered to think of the creature his mother had become. _Lady Stoneheart is no more, either, _he reminded himself.

"If that is all, you may go now. If Sansa has asked you to escort me, I won't be needing it."

"She did no such thing."

"Then why were you here?"

"This place is not unique to just you, my lord. It haunts others as well."

"Perhaps the memory of your indiscretions brings you as much pain as it had given me, to wake up a crippled boy and live a crippled man," Bran spat, bristling, the memory of learning he would never walk again fresh in his mind, "I surely hope so, Kingslayer, I surely hope it does."

"I already know what it means to live a crippled man," he replied, raising his hand of gold where a flesh one ought to have been. "I don't ask for forgiveness. What I did, I did for love, no matter how misguided," Jaime said quietly, regarding the tower entrance with bitterness. He moved off the wall and walked past Bran's chair.

"Cersei was a monster," Bran called back, and he heard the footsteps behind him stall. "Joffrey was a monster. You fathered monsters and slept with monsters. You loved monsters. What does that make you, Kingslayer? You arrested my father in King's Landing. You killed Jory Cassel. You commanded the armies that took my uncle Edmure Tully, and you threw a seven year old child from a tower to keep a secret."

Bran hated himself for the flush he felt across his cheeks. Hated it, because the pain made him feel like a child, and he was once again reminded that neither his father, nor his mother, nor Robb, nor Arya would ever place a sure hand upon his shoulder and assuage the fear that sat in his stomach, sick and green like the dreams that would take him for weeks on end.

"Your sister said the same words to me."

"And what did you say to her that convinced her to trust you?"

Jaime took a deep breath, as though trying to refute the present, "Trusting me was her own decision. She thought for me to live my life in the service of a Stark was a better way to pay my debt. That, and if I ever gave any hint of betrayal, any hint that I was still the man from King's Landing, she would take my head as she took Petyr Baelish's."

"My sister has grown claws." A year ago Bran would never have been able to imagine her taking a man's life so coldly, but the Sansa that had retaken Winterfell had a heart wrapped in Valyrian steel.

"Long and sharp, my lord," Jaime said, with a smirk.

"As long and sharp as yours," Bran muttered back.

Bran parted ways with Ser Jaime Lannister to join his sister at dinner. The Great Hall of Winterfell was decorated as it always was, just the single banner of a grey direwolf upon a field of white hung on the wall behind the raised Lords table. Sansa sat in the middle, and though she was not wearing any attire more grand than that of the other few nobles seated, she looked like a lady from a song with her long copper hair shining in the candlelight.

Seated at her right hand, he may be have been taller than her, as tall as their Lord Father had been, but the difference was impossible to overcome when she stood and he remained the same height. Meera told him otherwise; that he was statelier and wiser than any lord, and that mattered more than height or strength. _You remember Robert Baratheon, Bran. You remember what happened to him. He was one of the strongest men in the Seven Kingdoms, and all his strength couldn't keep them together. You're a better lord than he was king. _He didn't see why she had to say those things, but it made his chest ache when she did, looking more and more beautiful each passing day, something he had not an inkling of how to tell her.

The men and women seated at the long tables laughed merrily, some already into their cups. The rich scent of roasting food hung in the warm air, paltry as the dishes were. Sansa chatted with Maege Mormont about building glass gardens in the middle of the winter town. Wylla Manderly gossiped with the Alysane, the Head of Household Guard while Brienne stood stiffly behind Sansa' chair. Asha Greyjoy laughed as some man pulled her onto his lap, a cup of wine in her hand, but her eyes lacked any sort of humor. Bran understood. She feared for her brother who had sinned, paid, and had vanished along with Ramsay Bolton and the false Arya Stark before the North had fallen to Sansa's army. Roose Bolton had died that day, but his depraved bastard son and Theon Greyjoy along with him had vanished as if they had turned to ash and been carried on the wind. _Men and their sins_.

The sparse soup had been carried away and a dish of salted potatoes replaced it by the time Sansa turned to him. He was grateful that today her smile reached her eyes.

"The cooks have done marvelously with tonight's dinner. I am glad to see you eating with us again; I have missed your company," she said.

"I have only been gone for this one evening."

"You have been gone since the night before. Were you with the blacksmith the entire time? Is he recovering well?" Sansa asked.

"Yes," he said chewing on his potatoes, sending Sansa an apologetic look for his lapse in manner before continuing, "Yes, he's better now. He tried to get up today and reopened the scratches on his shoulder, but other than that, he's making a fine recovery. We'll have an armorer before long."

"A good worker, hopefully," she said.

"Yes, hopefully," Bran repeated, eating another large bite.

"Did you have a chance to look over the reports from the South yet?"

"Yes. There were pages upon pages to look through, mostly just boring logging reports that would be better work for the steward, but there was a raven from Beth Cassel at the Twins. She says that there have been reports of bodies in the wood in the Riverlands. Some say it's a band of outlaws."

"It's not the Brotherhood, is it?"

"If it is, mayhaps that's the reason Ser Gendry left them. But Beth writes that others say it's a monster, a giant. It's probably outlaws though. How many giants do we know? Gregor Clegane was killed years ago. The Hound maybe? His brother, Sandor Clegane? He razed Saltpans, after all."

At the mention of the Hound his sister's fork paused on the way to her mouth. She set it down and stared at her plate. "The Hound is dead, Bran. He died before his brother," she said.

"Good riddance, I say. He was awful," Bran said, remembering his cruel laughter all those years ago, when he had dreams of being a knight and stared at the Kingslayer's gilded armor and white cloak with the lust of a child. Sansa had been afraid of him, he remembered. His scars had been an ugly thing to look upon.

"No," she said. "He was awful, but he was not his brother." She was quiet, and it made Bran remember all the years he had not known her. "It doesn't matter now," she continued, "The Hound is dead."

Somehow, it did matter.

It was a thing that adults did; they said one thing but they meant something else entirely. He wanted to ask her what had happened in the Vale and in King's Landing that had turned her so bitter; he wanted so badly to ask that it burned. There were things a person would keep secret forever, and so he could not bring himself to ask. _Broken birds_, he thought, _broken birds, the lot of us_.

She picked at her mostly intact slice of pie for the rest of the dinner, silent and not eating a bite. Before another round of wine was brought out, she excused herself.

"I'm quite tired. I think I'll retire now, if you please. The dessert was lovely."

She had not even tasted a bit of the pie.

"Yes, of course. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Bran."

She exited the room, leaving it colder in her wake.

* * *

To Be Continued...

A/N: Please be kind and review.

Are the characters making sense? Or are they too OOC?

Is the setting and plot elements as they are presented in the story clear enough?

What doesn't seem to make sense when you read it?

Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow?


	4. Chapter 4

Sansa

* * *

Sansa woke abruptly in the dead of night to the howling of wolves. She tossed aside her tangled blankets and furs, and pulled a robe of heavy wool over her shoulders. The unearthly chorus awaited her as she opened the shutters at the end of her bedchamber, letting in the cold winter air. Over the tops of the snow-capped pines of the Wolfswood and the parapets of the keep, Sansa felt the echo of the wolves. The old foxhound that slept on the rug beside her bed whined, his blind eyes unseeing.

_I have never heard so many at once._

She shivered.

It was still not yet dawn when she left her rooms, dressed in a dove gray wool dress with Tully red velvet trim; the embroidered fish and direwolves made by her own hand. Brienne did not accompany her as she strode through the dark keep, still and silent save for the scurry of a tawny cat, and a guard whose patrol had just ended.

In the yard, she saw the scattered sentries on the parapets; huddled near glowing watch fires to keep out the cold. The wind went through her like a knife despite her thick shifts, stockings, underskirts. It would be colder still on the parapet, but she was restless and needed to see. _Something, anything. _There was neither snow nor the gray clouds like pillars of smoke that heralded it, only thin wisps of cloud above and beyond that lay the stars. She could make out the bright blue eye of the Ice Dragon, showing the way North.

She heard the howls again, muffled in the tower with the stairs to Winterfell's inner wall. When she reached the top, the sentry there bowed low.

"M'lady," he said, "Did the wolves wake you?"

"Have you caught sight of them?" asked Sansa.

"No, m'lady, but perhaps when the sun rises." Shadd, the sentry pointed with his good hand towards the east, over the towers of Winterfell, to the strip of gray dawn at the horizon. "I never heard so many wolves in my life," shuddered the Northman, "I have family in the Wintertown; my old mother and my sister and her son. They forage in that forest, m'lady."

"I will do everything in my power to keep the smallfolk safe." While her promise was just words, the sentry smiled tiredly as though receiving good news, and turned back to his vigil, leaving her to watch as the night grew old and the minutes drew on, thoughts keeping her planted upon the spot in quiet pondering of the vast expanse with the insecurities and promises of the future upon the horizon.

The sky turned to gray, and Shadd's duty was done for the night. Slowly the night yielded and cast the world deep cobalt. The west was no longer a black sea of spotted hearth fires and sentry tower and the moat glittered below in the torchlight.

And deep from the inky forest the howls came again.

"A bad omen, I say," said Asha Greyjoy, "my lady." It was only a little mocking.

"One day you will not laugh, Asha," said Sansa, gazing over the main wall of Winterfell's keep. _I once built Winterfell out of snow on a morning like this. _She thought of Petyr and his kiss, the one her aunt Lysa had seen, and shivered, feeling ill at the memory. _Petyr is gone, I must remember. _Sansa had seen his head roll across the bone-dry winter grass of the Riverlands by her own command.

"One day," said Asha, who came to stand beside Sansa, her breath coming out in white puffs.

"I think we ought to see how big the pack really is. Summer was howling something terrible."

"A hundred. Mayhaps more. It's unnatural."

"My wish would be to lose neither our horses nor our men, but I have a duty to the Wintertown and the smallfolk that must come before that fear. I don't want to lose horses or men to a rabid pack, but what of the town? How many will we lose? How much game and logging will be lost if we do nothing?"

"It's not yet dawn, my lady. We can gather the men when they wake."

"The men?" Sansa said, surprised. She would have imagined Asha herself leading the fray, with Alysanne at her back. Brienne would stay at Sansa's side.

"They're good for dying," said Asha with a laugh on her lips, and shifted the axe on her hip. It was not the axe that made Asha Greyjoy look as if she didn't quite belong. Northerners wore all kinds of axes, swords, dirks, and maces, and their clothes were rugged and worn, perhaps not bitten by the sea wind nor crusted in salt, as the people of Pyke, but worn all the same. Perhaps, Sansa thought as she watched the line of pink grow over the horizon, it was the stable ground beneath her feet that Asha hated, or perhaps she, like her brother, hated the den of wolves she lived in.

"Asha, I do not lie to you, do I?"

"You are a liar, but to me you don't lie."

_Is it lies really? Telling men and women at court what they best wish to hear, and speaking gently bitter truths so they do not withdraw loyalty? _Sansa wondered how many times she would have liked to scream and rage and shout, and hadn't. Would some have loved her more if she didn't wear fine wool dresses and took up Asha's axe? She thought of Arya, long lost, and her little needle. "Then I know you not to be a liar. Would you tell me another truth?"

"Depends on the truth, my lady."

"Do you hate us, as Theon did?"

"Yes," she said, "Because he did not hate you at all. He belonged at home with me. You Northerners are not as terrible as the people of the South, but snow is not the sea as much as I wish it were so."

"Is it worth it, then? Staying for the hope of finding him? The Seastone Chair is yours."

"When I sit on it, my brother will be home with me. Is it worth it, my lady, for you? Waiting for word of your sister, your brother?"

She had not seen Arya since King's Landing, a thousand years ago. Before winter, before autumn. Before Joffrey had ever had her beaten and stripped, before Joffrey had cut off her father's head and called it mercy. There were rumors of Arya all across Westeros. Some said that she had died in King's Landing. Others said that she had lived to be wife to the Bolton bastard. Arya had died at the Twins with her mother and Robb. Arya had died on the road north, stolen by a stranger in a storm. Arya had died when the Bastard of Bolton took her from a ravaged castle.

"My sister is dead."

"So is Theon, my lady."

"And we have both just lied to each other. So what shall we do now?"

"What women do when they lie to each other," replied Asha Greyjoy, a humorless smirk still upon her lips, "We may either hate each other or love each other, either way we will live as before."

Asha gave Sansa a short bow and with swaying hips turned to leave the way she came.

"Asha, wait," Sansa started, and the older woman stopped to turn. "Wait, please."

"I was going to wake the men, my lady. It is nearly dawn."

"I bear quite a lot of love for you, Asha. We have never been friends, and I suppose you may see yourself as a hostage as Theon saw himself, but you are neither unwanted nor unloved here."

"Is this supposed to warm my heart, my lady?"

"It is supposed to tell you that I value you greatly."

Asha watched the dawn for a moment before saying, "I would much rather serve a queen than a king, my lady."

"I am not a queen," said Sansa, joining Asha's side at the stairs to the parapet.

"Have you never thought of it?"

"Bran's claim comes before mine."

"That's not an answer."

"I thought of it once. Lord Manderly is still conspiring that the North declare independence."

Together their footsteps crunched in the frozen ground as they crossed to the main keep. Sansa could smell bread baking in the kitchens and the rustling that meant the castle was waking.

"Manderly and all the other lords, my lady."

"I would be lying to you twice before the sun even rose to say I don't still think of it, but it seems unlikely that Daenerys Targaryen will give away half her kingdom when she does not need to." _And to the children of her Usurper's right hand man, _she left unspoken. "Let us wake the men and think of more pressing issues."

"They will like the sight of you at this forsaken hour far more than the end of my axe, that is sure."

Sansa smiled, "My men are fond of you."

"Men are fond of anything with tits and a cunt."

"Asha!"

The Ironborn woman grinned, but her eyes did not. Sansa thought perhaps she did the same. Only with Bran did she ever feel like happiness could be hers again, sitting together in her solar and eating lemon cakes by the hearth, with Summer at her feet. They would tell each other Old Nan's stories, tried to use the voices she used, tell it just the way she did.

Those were the only times Sansa could say she ever truly felt happy, and they were rare.

She watched her men rise. There was Wybert Eldwyne saddling his gelding in the yard. She saw Karstark men from far branches of the line and Tully bannermen. _We are not going to war again, but why does it feel so much like battle?_

She watched her men rise and she watched her men go. _There are faces I may never see smile again. _The thought turned her stomach, but she watched the gate until there was not a single man she could see on the road.

"There's been a raven for you my lady," said Maester Samwell, puffing into the yard with a thin scroll.

"Thank you," she said. Sansa buried her dread and her fear where she always had and smiled at the maester. "I pray for good news."

With Brienne at her side, Sansa left the yard. Up and up the stairs she climbed, to her solar. It was only with the door firmly closed and the guard dismissed that she dared open the message. It bore the black seal of House Targaryen. Perhaps Sansa imagined the scent of smoke on the parchment.

_Lady Sansa_, it began, _You must understand that I am reluctant to give up my kingdom. One of my advisors, who knows the North well, has suggested that the North be given autonomy like that of Dorne in response to your last request for independence. I believe in the ill luck of six kingdoms, when the Faith of the Seven is so based on seven and not six. Lord Bran is unable to travel to Dragonstone to swear fealty, and you have refused me many times to leave before your castle has been secured and rebuilt. I understand this, though you must know that if you never swear fealty, the North will be branded again as traitor. I have dragons, Lady Stark, and you have only snow and stone. Ice may burn. You gave me the Vale and I gave you the funds of Casterly Rock as recompense. For the Riverlands, you shall have principality. Bring me a Northerner to sit on my council and to bend the knee. It needs not be a Stark; there are so few of you now. Perhaps a daughter of yours could have a place in my court, in the future. Torrhen Stark bent the knee, and the rest of the North followed._

_Daenerys Stormborn_

_Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains_

Sansa Stark sat unmoving for some time, the letter pushed aside on her desk so she would not have to look right at it. _I ought to burn it, _she thought, _burn it and see what this queen thinks of that. May the grayscale take her dragons, and her castle crumble to dust. _Her thoughts picked up their pace as her frustration mounted, before she turned and broke her silence with worried words.

"Brienne," she said, "Oh, Brienne, what can I do?"

"What has she offered?"

"The Riverlands for the title of a _princess,_" she replied. "It means nothing. My brother Robb will have meant nothing. He will have been crowned for nothing and will have died for nothing and my family will be forgotten. Queen Daenerys does not pay. No one pays for what was done to us. I promised her, Brienne. I _promised_."

_Soon I'll be like she was: a creature of ash and dust, with no joy in my heart. _

"I know, my lady," said Brienne. The Maid of Tarth placed a hand on Sansa's shoulder. It was a gentle hand, despite being as large as a man's, and it reminded Sansa of the woman her mother had been, not the creature.

"Lead me to Ser Gendry's room. Please."

"The outlaw knight, m'lady?"

"You remember what he did for me, Brienne."

"Yes, my lady, I do." Brienne put a hand on her shoulder when Sansa came to the door of her solar. "Perhaps you should write Arianne Martell."

"Perhaps I should," said Sansa, and with Brienne she made her way through the keep to the small room where Ser Gendry had stayed for the last couple weeks.

"Lady Sansa?"

Sansa looked up from the letter in her lap to the thin man lying on the cot. She smiled kindly, waiting for him to wake fully, the letter tucked away into her sleeve.

"I'm sorry if I woke you."

"No, m'lady," came Ser Gendry's groggy and strained voice from the cot. Sansa had not seen Ser Gendry herself since the night he dragged himself inside the gates of Winterfell, half dead. Her men found the carcass of his horse in the woods the next morning, and returned with what they could salvage of his packs and saddle. There was not much. It was a week before his fever abated and another week before he was fit to leave the room. Bran would sit with Ser Gendry occasionally, finding some mystery there he wanted to solve, but more often Bran was abed with his green dreams.

"D'you…do you remember me, m'lady?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered simply, but the answer was not simple at all. She remembered him as sullen and had hardly spoken to him at all in the Riverlands, but he had held the White Fork for her in battle, and shod all her horses.

In his face Sansa saw the late Renly Baratheon, slain by shadows. She saw Mya's eyes and it made her heart turn for her friend in the Vale. She kept in mind the Baratheon resemblance. Robert had many bastards, though Cersei had done her best to kill them. Perhaps one had found Winterfell. _Robert's blood looking for Lyanna's bones_. She loved the stories of all the Starks, but her father told her when she was much younger that Robert loved the absence of Lyanna more tenderly than her presence. _He's like seven ghosts at once._ "None of the others came with you? Not Jeyne Heddle? Lem Lemoncloak? Or Anguy?"

"No," he said, and for a moment he was the man from the Riverlands, a storm building on his brow. He was so angry Sansa was afraid she had said something terribly wrong. It felt as if a set of claws had gripped her in her tummy. _I didn't think to bring Brienne with me._

"I didn't mean to offend," she said in a small voice. _I'm a lady, yet I sound like a mouse_.

The words melted the tension and Ser Gendry looked to her, his fury gone as if he'd been slapped soundly.

"Not on your part m'lady, never," he said, "They turned me out. I don't like to think on them."

He said nothing for a short while, the knot in his throat going up and down and up and down. There was only guilt where anger had been. She almost felt sorry for having been afraid. _But only just._

"I'm sorry," she said after her heart had stopped thumping so quickly, "for what Lady Stoneheart did," gesturing to the twisted line of white and pink flesh at his neck.

He absently ran his hand, thickly calloused and dark, across the scar. "She did worse to some." He shifted against the pillows, pushing himself into a sitting position. Sansa had to wonder how he did not wince in pain as the puckered skin that peeked from underneath his bandages stretched across his collarbone. But then again, she did remember him as the particularly stubborn one.

"Maester Samwell has told me you have become restless. More than two weeks is a long time to lie in a sickbed. I told him that I would walk with you around the keep, if you are feeling well enough. You will be doing me a favor, Ser Gendry. All the able men have left to see to the pack that arrived last night, so all my usual company is doing double work."

"Not the wolves that…killed my horse?" he asked, frowning. She thought of Ned Stark, who seldom smiled, and Robert Baratheon who seldom didn't. _But his cross moods were worse were they not? Where else could Joffrey have learned that temper?_

"Mayhaps they are. We have never seen these wolves before. The pack is monstrous, a man from town says. He says that the alpha is larger than any natural wolf, thirstier for blood than any hungry wolf he has known." She saw Ser Gendry shudder and felt the urge to spare him memories of his attack, "I think it could be a very frightened man speaking his fears, but we will hear the news when the men return, and for now we will walk."

"I've no proper clothes, m'lady," he mumbled softly.

"I had some brought up not too long ago, along with hot water and soap should you wish to wash. I will wait with Brienne," said Sansa primly, but kindly.

The Maid of Tarth was outside the door, waiting for her in a sapphire blue tunic of velvet and wool, a gray cloak trimmed in silver fox fur on her shoulders, and a blade at her hip.

"You are alright, my lady?" asked Brienne, when the door closed to leave Ser Gendry to bathe in peace.

_Am I? _It was hard to tell what she felt.

"He is Robert Baratheon's blood," she said.

"He has Renly's eyes," said Brienne with sorrow on her tongue, "Will you tell Stannis Baratheon? Edric Storm is vanished. He may need to know, in case the boy is never found again."

"I don't know," she said, and thought on it for several minutes longer.

When the door finally opened, Sansa stood.

The smith tugged at the slightly too-short sleeves of the thick woolen tunic he had been given, but Sansa felt as if the gray linens, clean and simple, pleased him. He was thin, covered in scars and wrapped in bandages, but he looked better than he had in days.

"You are looking much better, Ser Gendry," Sansa supplied kindly. "Do you feel so?"

"Aye, m'lady," Ser Gendry replied, and he indeed did look brighter of face, and taller of frame. He gave Brienne a nod.

"These are better terms to meet under, Ser Gendry," she returned.

"Aye, m'lady," he said and Sansa saw the air change between them. Perhaps an apology had passed that she was not aware of.

"I thought a short tour of the keep to be best. You must be very careful not to strain yourself overmuch," said Sansa, "but Brienne is here should you not feel well suddenly."

They walked together from the servant's quarters. Gendry walked slowly, carefully, as if every step was a bargain with the Stranger, but Sansa did not push him. She did not insult him with an offer of an arm, but walked beside him, her woolen gown and fox fur trimmed cloak trailing with a whisper upon the stone floor. Brienne walked on her other side.

As they walked, Sansa told Gendry the history Winterfell had seen. She told him of Bran the Builder, and the giants that raised the granite walls of the keep; she told him of magic and of heroes long dead, of the spring water that ran in veins through the very walls of stone.

Gendry touched the wall without a trace of a frown upon his face.

"He raised the castle of Storm's End from the sea, Winterfell from the center of the earth, and the Wall he built from the heavens themselves. He was the first King in the North," she recited, "And after, the generation of Kings went unbroken until Torrhen Stark, who bent the knee to Aegon the Conqueror."

Gendry listened in silence, but Sansa could see a rapt glean in his eyes, as well as Brienne's. _She likes songs, _Sansa remembered.

"Some time after the first Brandon came Theon the Hungry Wolf, whose kingdom was ravaged by war, and he grew lean and hungry for it. Brandon the Shipwright built a ship to cross the Summer Sea, and was never seen again. His crypt is empty. In grief, his son burned his father's fleet. They called him Brandon the Burner. There came King Jonnel and King Dorren, who lived when the children of the forest traded with the Night's Watch. When the rangers fought off giants and mammoths. And after them came Jon Stark who built the White Harbor, and his son Rickard who took the Neck for the North, after defeating the Marsh King and marrying his daughter. They all lived here, slept here, ate here, prayed here."

The entrance to the Godswood was before them now, and Sansa had surprised herself with how far the three of them had walked in true.

"D'you know the whole history of Winterfell by heart?" asked Gendry, eyes wide in interest. He did not look worn out by the walk, but rather invigorated.

"By heart, yes," she laughed, "that is a good word for it. I spent so long wishing for this place that it would seem my studies from so long ago decided to root in my heart. I was hopeless at sums though," she thought glumly, "Arya was always better than me at sums." _If I had Arya, running this household would not be so heavy. If only I had my sister, if only._

Sansa turned to find Gendry's face pulled into the deep frown he oft wore, and thinking she had bored him greatly, turned away from the Godswood.

"M'lady?"

"Yes, Ser Gendry?"

"Is there…I mean, would it be possible…" he chewed heavily over his words, "May I see the Godswood?"

"Yes, of course, if I have not exhausted you with stories and staircases," Sansa said.

"I'd…I'd like to pray," said Ser Gendry, as if the words themselves had never been said aloud, his voice long unused and rough, too frail, too mortal to ever hold under the weight of what he meant to say. Sansa had once known a man with a voice like a rasp.

"I would never deny a man his gods, Ser Gendry," she said, and let him walk alone into the Godswood, though she worried.

"I doubt that he was ever fond of the Lord of Light, but I would not have thought him fond of any gods." came Brienne's voice from behind Sansa.

"A man has a right to choose his gods."

"Still, a southern man praying to northern gods. It's an odd sight."

In the distance, she could see only Gendry's head of black hair and the gray cloak on his broad back.

"What do you pray for, Brienne?"

"I pray for peace, my lady. I pray that I will never break my oath to Lady Catelyn. I pray I do not break my oaths to you."

"Those are good prayers, Brienne."

"And you, my lady?"

"I pray for my sister. I pray for Rickon's return. I pray for my father's soul, as I pray for my mother's and for Robb's. I pray for Jon Snow. I pray that my men and women will be honorable. I pray that our men return today unharmed. I pray they return my father's bones. I pray for peace and I pray for vengeance and I pray that I have the wisdom to know the difference." A long time ago she had prayed for the Mother to gentle the Hound, but the Hound was dead now. _Robb too_, she thought, _I had prayed for Robb to win the war and take me home, but the gods saw fit to slay him under the guest right_.

"I wish I could have found her, my lady. I would search for a hundred years if you wished it."

Sansa smiled and laid a hand on Brienne's arm. "You would not need to do it. She will return. She will." There was more comfort for Sansa with Brienne than there had ever been with the knights in King's Landing. _Perhaps I shall write a song for the only true knight left, and she is not even anointed._

Sansa sighed and turned her eyes away from the Godswood.

"Brienne, I must answer this letter. If you could please escort Ser Gendry back to his room. I am afraid he is not strong enough."

Brienne's face betrayed nothing but duty, and Sansa turned to go to her rooms. Clamor in the yard stopped her and she turned her head to the sound, as did Brienne and Gendry, who was still alone in the Godswood. Arriving like the rush of a flood over a river, she heard yells and shouts that carried over the walls, and with dread Sansa thought of the men she had sent to the forest.

_Please, let no one be dead._

But the gods were cruel, Sansa knew that.

Later, she stared numbly at the ruined, mangled throat of a crofter, the flesh ripped from the half crushed bone, windpipe gone. _His name was Osric, _Sansa remembered as she looked upon the body brought into the yard. _He used to bring my mother his best turnips._ She didn't know why she remembered that now.

"A black wolf, m'lady," sobbed his daughter, a girl no older than Sansa. "A black wolf large as a pony, and teeth like bear."

_Yes, the gods are cruel._

From the center of the Keep rose a howl, a long and ineffable sound that made Sansa's skin prickle with gooseflesh.

* * *

To Be Continued...

A/N: Please be kind and review.

Are the characters making sense? Or are they too OOC?

Is the setting and plot elements as they are presented in the story clear enough?

What doesn't seem to make sense when you read it?

Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow?


End file.
